


Shadows Between Stars

by thosefarplaces



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 18:37:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1993527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thosefarplaces/pseuds/thosefarplaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orphan Black Space!AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows Between Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [in space all stars look the same](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/62628) by scissorsandglitter. 



Space is quiet, but the ship is not.

If you did not know her, you might not notice. You might think she is a silent thing, a silent _thing_ , like the gap after a last breath, or the rise before a falling blow. But this thought would be a lie. If you knew how to listen, how to feel not just with ears, but with skin and heart, then you would see.

Helena knows her. Helena notices.

There is humming, always, but cloth and leather so easily shut it out. They make her deaf. They _weaken_ her. She is not here for more chains. So she goes barefoot through the ship’s hollows, skin and scars alight with cold, and listens to her song. It is such a sweet song, when all is well. It is a lullaby. She knows every vibration like the chords of her own throat (though she is not so good at talking, not as good as Sarah, but practice will help. Time will help). When there is a hitch in the song, in between heartbeats, she feels it like a snag in her chest. When the song sours, her tongue goes stale in her mouth. She races through corridors, falls down stairwells, shoving the one with glasses aside, hissing curses at a frowning Rachel (Sarah has warned her about this, but Helena does not care), until she reaches the ship’s purring electric heart. Helena sings back to her. She nurses her well. And when the song is right again, when her world is nearly whole, she curls up in her bunk beneath the circuitry of its great heart, and she smiles. Her ship still flies, and so Sarah is safe. Tomorrow, maybe, Sarah will smile at her when they eat breakfast (her stomach growls; the ship gives an answering rumble that only she hears). Tomorrow, maybe, she will be all here. All whole.

Helena tends to the heart of a beast that cannot love her and cannot hurt her. It carries the ten of them onwards, through the vast darkness towards a distant, amber light.


End file.
